AmBox: Device-to-Blockchain Ambient Sensing for Food Traceability

TL;DR

AmBox is a blockchain-based system that ensures secure, tamper-proof environmental data collection from sensors for food supply chain traceability, enhancing transparency and trust.

Contribution

It introduces a novel device-to-blockchain ambient sensing system tailored for food traceability, with flexible deployment options and a prototype implementation.

Findings

Reliable, timely data collection demonstrated with Raspberry Pi and ESP32 hardware.

System enhances transparency and stakeholder trust in the food supply chain.

Operates with minimal intermediaries, ensuring data integrity.

Abstract

From production to consumption, ensuring food quality and traceability depends on reliable monitoring of environmental conditions across the supply chain. Ambient sensing devices can collect relevant data such as temperature and humidity, but ensuring its integrity among stakeholders remains a challenge. This work presents AmBox, a system that enables device-to-blockchain ambient sensing for food traceability. AmBox connects sensors to a blockchain, ensuring secure, verifiable, and tamper-resistant data collection with minimal intermediaries. It manages sensor commissioning and operation with the adequate business context. AmBox can operate with standalone nodes or within a distributed node-mote architecture, allowing flexible deployment at different points along the supply chain. A prototype using Raspberry Pi and ESP32 hardware can record sensor data directly on Hyperledger Fabric. Experimental results show that AmBox provides timely and reliable data that can increase transparency and trust between the supply chain stakeholders.